It may be objected, that, to assume the world to have been created with fossil skeletons in its crust, —skeletons of animals that never really existed,—is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive ? Were the growth lines of a created shell intended to deceive ? Was the navel of the created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had had a parent?*
These peculiarities of structure were inseparable
* Dr. Harris has the following observations :— "Why might not God have created the crust of the earth, just as it is, with all its numberless stratifications, and diversified formations, complete ? And the analogy for such an exercise of creative power is supposed to be found In the creation of Adam, not as an infant, but as an adult; and in the production of the full-sized trees of Eden. To which the reply is direct: the maturity of the first man, and of the objects around him, could not deceive him by implying that they had slowly grown to that state. His first knowledge was the knowledge of the contrary. He lived, partly, in order to proclaim the fact of his creation. And, could his own body, or any of the objects created at the same time, have been subjected to a physiological examination, they would, no doubt, have been found to indicate their miraculous production in their very destitution-of all the traces of an early growth; whereas the shell of the earth is a crowded storehouse of evidence of its gradual formation. So that the question, expressed in other language, amounts to this: Might not the God of infinite truth have enclosed in the earth, at its creation, evidence of its having existed ages before its actual production ? Of course, the objector would disavow such a sentiment. But such appears to be the real import of the objection; and, as such, it involves its own refutation."—PreAdamite Earth, p. 83.
"Omphalos: An attempt to untie the geological knot" (1857) by Philip Henry Gosse. pp 347 - 348